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OxHRH

Still the second sex: Some feminist reflections on the new General Comment of the UN Human Rights Committee on the right to life

Fleur van Leeuwen - 13th May 2019

Equality and Non-Discrimination| Gender Based Violence

In October 2018 the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee (HRC) adopted general comment (GC) 36 on the right to life, replacing GC 6 and GC 14. Latter documents date back to the 1980s and attest to the androcentric nature of the international human rights system. Neither document pays attention to issues that characteristically affect the […]

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OxHRH

Expectations of the Victims of Radovan Karadžić

Richard J. Goldstone and Amanda Hukanović - 30th April 2019

Conflict and Security

The Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) recently delivered the long-awaited judgement in the appeal of Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić. A trial chamber of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) had delivered its judgment on 24 March, 2016. It held that Karadžić, President of the territory known […]

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OxHRH

Turkish Local Elections: What Does the Delayed Declaration of Election Results Mean?

Saeed Bagheri - 25th April 2019

Constitutions Institutions and Nation Building

While nearly three weeks have passed since local elections were held in Turkey on 31st March 2019, the Turkish Supreme Electoral Council has not issued any statement on the election results in two major cities of the country – Istanbul, and the Turkish capital, Ankara. According to Article 79 of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (1982), election […]

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OxHRH

Asylum Applications Should be Judged on the Basis of Law not Religious Doctrine

Ewelina U. Ochab - 24th April 2019

Migration Asylum and Trafficking

In March 2019, a Home Office letter rejecting an asylum application made the headlines of the biggest media outlets in the UK and abroad. It was not the case itself that attracted this attention but the arguments in the letter that have weighed in on the debate whether Christianity is a peaceful religion. The response […]

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OxHRH

UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children raises serious concerns regarding Ireland’s history of illegal adoption practices

Helen Kehoe - 23rd April 2019

Equality and Non-Discrimination

Ireland has an extensive history of systemic human rights abuses of women and children, encompassing multiple institutional settings and spanning most of the 20th century: Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools and the non-consensual practice of symphysiotomy in hospitals. The legal responses of the state have been fragmented, generally narrow in approach, and often the subject of […]

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OxHRH

Gabriel Resources v. Romania: Local Residents as Third Parties in Investor-State Dispute Settlement?

Lisa Kadel and Christian Schliemann - 19th April 2019

Business & Resources & Environment & Development

The Canadian corporation Gabriel Resources wanted to establish Europe’s largest gold mine in Rosia Montana, Romania. Local villagers and Romanian civil society resisted the corporation and the state, due to perceived disregard for their human rights and environmental concerns. After a long battle they prevented the project. As a response Gabriel Resources sued Romania for […]

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OxHRH

Zambia’s police force undermine opposition in Sesheke

Mwai Daka - 18th April 2019

Constitutions Institutions and Nation Building

Recent reports and video footage of the political unrest in Sesheke’s Parliamentary by-elections have brought to light the disproportionate use of force by Zambia’s police, who opened fire at the opposition party, the United Party for National Development (UPND) and its supporters, during a political rally. These events have brought the uneasy relationship between President […]

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OxHRH

When does a person have an intellectual disability? The insights of the US Supreme Court

Martin Kwan - 15th April 2019

Equality and Non-Discrimination

A death sentence against a convict with an intellectual disability (ID) would violate the Eighth Amendment’s proscription of cruel and unusual punishments, because it would serve no penological purpose. In the recent US Supreme Court (SC) decision of Moore v Texas, the issue was (once again, having been litigated before in 2017) the correctness of the […]

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OxHRH

Machine Decision-making in the criminal justice system: The FATAL4JUSTICE? Project

Karen Yeung - 8th April 2019

Criminal Justice

The capacity to collect, store and process digital data in real-time on cloud servers, and to subject vast data sets to train and feed machine learning algorithms, have enabled the development of machines capable of making decisions across an almost limitless array of applications. These ‘algorithmic decision-making’ (ADM) systems range from systems that offer guidance […]

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OxHRH

Chile’s debt to children: State engagement in children´s rights protection

Eliana Barrera and Leonardo Cofre - 5th April 2019

Children's Rights

878 deaths of children under the care of the Chilean National Children’s Service are currently under criminal investigation. This revelation was followed by the submission of a complaint under the communications procedure of the Committee of the Rights of the Child (CRC), resulting in a damming report in June 2018 on the serious and systematic violation of children’s rights by […]

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